You Are the Shell to My Tortoise | ✓

A Little Bit of Trivia

1. I wrote a few times that the bat in the story crawled/walked. There's only one species of bat that can crawl/walk (the vampire bat).

2a. Mr. Jameson was initially meant to play a bigger role in the story. He was supposed to be a vampire hunter come to this school under false pretenses in order to capture/find the vampire he knew was here. There would've been a mini-showdown between them in that original plotline. But I rewrote this story in a lighter/fluffier tone entirely, so that idea was scrapped.

2b. Mr. Jameson was supposed to be involved in a semi-love triangle in this story (which ended up not having a love triangle at all lol), but I had no intention of them having an actual 'relationship' that went out of the bounds of their professional relationship as teacher and student because I didn't want them to cross that line. I did want him to lowkey like/want to protect Chelsea and warn her away from Nolan, though. But then because 2a was scrapped, 2b no longer makes sense and therefore was scrapped too.

3. Some of you are not going to be happy with me, but Cody was written in mostly to make Nolan jealous and prod him into taking actions he wouldn't have otherwise. Originally, he was meant to crush on Chelsea and therefore trigger Nolan into action, but then I realized I didn't want to bother with the hassle of writing a semi-love triangle here when the other guy wouldn't have a large role to play at all. So I decided to make them totally platonic. That's the reason why Cody likes Ashley—it removes the 'threat' but keeps the 'jealousy' factor for Nolan since Nolan doesn't know that. That's also why Cody hasn't gotten together with Ashley—I was too lazy to flesh out their relationship. It's kind of boring if he just asked her out and they got together off-screen. Ahaha. Please don't throw tomatoes at me! (I might do something about this in the sequel novella, but we'll see. Or a spin-off? Nothing's set in stone yet.)

4. Speaking of Cody, there's a mini-backstory for him and Cheryl that wasn't necessary to the main focus of You Are the Shell to My Tortoise, which is also why I didn't write it. They were both neighbors and childhood friends, so their parents were family friends. There was some family drama/misunderstanding that happened between their family members, forcing Cheryl and Cody to take sides and they drifted apart as a result of that. Subsequently they did realize it shouldn't have had any bearing on their friendship, but by then it was already too awkward between them.

5. Ashley told Chelsea in part 54 that she was going to meet someone in the student council. (Why were people in the comments assuming that she was gonna meet Cody??) The reason I didn't write the reason in was because Chelsea didn't need to know. Money went missing from the treasury, and they needed to call an urgent meeting over the issue. It was definitely not Cody. (lol)

6. Nolan started liking/noticing Chelsea romantically when he saved her from almost falling off the tree in part 27. He hadn't fallen head over heels just yet, but he was definitely looking at her with romantic interest. (If anyone's interested, I've posted this part from his POV on my Patreon, an extra named 'Jelly Nolan'.)

7. For the curious (including myself), bats hibernate or migrate, depending on the species.

8. I began writing this story based off the first couple pages of this manga I drew back in high school, and it was originally supposed to be super angsty in the middle/near the end. However as I wrote this out, it became lighter and more fluffy, which I'm quite happy with.

9. Just as an FYI, Nolan can drink water. He drinks water like a normal person, actually.

10. Nolan's father is emotionally stunted himself, which is why he didn't really understand how much Nolan needed him. It's kind of hard to write that into the story when Chelsea is the narrator, and when Nolan can barely see or recognize it himself.

11. The characters are written to be a bit more mature than I was at their age. I wanted them to be able to resolve their conflicts in a more emotionally stable way, but admittedly they may feel older than they're supposed to be as a result.

12. Derek's choking over tater tots when Chelsea said that Nolan had been avoiding her because he liked her was because he experienced the same thing over Melissa—some readers just jumped to conclusions thinking that he's another supernatural element lol T_T

13. Nolan eats mints to mask any bad breath from his diet, and he likes eating them because they're basically the only 'food' he can eat without throwing up. (Because they're not real food anyway.) They're absolutely tiny and have very few calories, so they don't have much impact on his body/digestive system. He doesn't swallow them. He sucks them until they're gone.

14. The bird that Cody mentioned flew into his classroom in part 75 was not Blue. Blue is a common nighthawk, and they're nocturnal or crepuscular (which means they're mostly active at dawn and/or dusk). They have classes in the day, so it definitely couldn't have been Blue!

15. I didn't write where Cody was going after graduation because he's not really a part of Chelsea's main friend group and the story takes place from her POV, and at that point he'd grown a lot closer to Ashley than he was to Chelsea, but I didn't expect so many readers to actually care about him. (I'm so sorry for using Cody as a convenient jealousy prop T_T) I decided to edit it in after all. He's going to the same college as Ashley, just fyi for those too lazy to go back and reread the epilogue.

16. Nolan can't read minds, and while his hearing is very good, he can't hear what another person is saying if they're in another room.

Something I just wanted to add: [A lot of people started hating on Chelsea's friends after part 71, but really, they're teenagers and they were unable to handle the situation as maturely as they wanted to. They thought that Chelsea was just trying to cover up for Nolan's lack of involvement in their relationship—kind of like when someone (A) is in a relationship with someone (B) who isn't really that interested in them, but because A is so in love with B, they disregard warning signs like that—since she couldn't really tell them the reason why Nolan barely seemed to spend any time with her. They only meet on Sunday evenings, by the way. To them, it seemed like Nolan wasn't even willing to go on a real date with her. The readers know otherwise, of course, but the characters don't.

Yeah, they overstepped, but then again, they're teenagers and need to learn things like boundaries. I'll also add that Nolan and Chelsea had only been together for a few months at that point—Chelsea had been best friends with them for over two years. To me, when you're a teenager, there's no guarantee of a lasting relationship with a new boyfriend of a couple months over the best friends who have been there for me far longer than he has. It's not like they'd been together for a couple of years already. Of course, there are always exceptions.]

Sorry this list was so late! There were a few other things I wanted to put in this little list, but I forgot them. I'll add them as I remember, probably. Thanks for reading!

P.S. I've published the novella sequel! Thanks for waiting for it. I've been really busy in real life lately, but I'll be able to regularly update from now on. It's on my profile under the name The Tortoise and His Sunrise.